Well upgrading vbulletin would cost $250 a year (and pirated versions often have back doors in them).... Which would be silly, when there are lots of free forum software like SMF out there. But this forum software still works, and it would be a lot of effort to make a new forum so this forum stays as it is.
Upgrading to a new VBulletin would (as Cyberkiller mentioned) mean an ongoing subscription of $250/year, not to mention a substantial amount of work in actually moving the forums. We'd need a totally new theme creating and a shit tonne of other things. It's just not worth it. And while legally speaking we shouldn't even be using this forum version without paying a subscription, at least it's an older version where they won't come chasing. I don't have any real issue with $250/year, given the box already costs nearly $3k per year, and that's before we start taking into account domains and whatnot. I just don't see any advantage to be gained from upgrading the forum software when we have so few users. If we were rocking over 200 active users then I might consider it.
what? May I ask what you ordered that costs ~250 EUR per month? Normal German rootservers are between 69 and 150 EUR right now. http://www.hetzner.de/de/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix/ https://www.filoo.de/rootserver-vergleich.html http://www.server4you.com/dedicated-server/bizserver/
Trickster probably has some crazy Xeon with highest imaginable single core speed since that is what Empires devours.
Pretty much. Plus I've had much cheaper servers with similar specifications with the same bandwidth - in theory. In reality, the quality of the internet connection on these servers caused pretty huge problems. If anyone remembers the first year of EPIC server, it was pretty unplayable. It's necessary to pay a premium and go with a "gaming" host who essentially guarantees your line quality. Because that's generally what's expensive - the internet connection. This includes the speed, the traffic limitations and above all, the guaranteed quality of the connection. Also, German servers were never on the table as I didn't want to be too far from the US. Given the position of our box at the moment, a sub-100 ping is possible for people in the NYC area, which is what I was hoping to achieve.
Wait... I thought the subscription fees for forum software was just so you get help and new versions. When you stop paying, those things stop but, your free to keep using what you have.
That is indeed the case. Still, the problem is having to somehow port over this LTL version to a legit version.
Yeah if the license isn't active, they can take action against you to either force you to stop using it, or get a license.
I've never heard of a life license, but I just googled it and they are a thing. Can we still get that for VB5? I'm checking their site and it says that the support for the forum version is for life, but it's only a 1-year license. I don't really get it to be honest.
You get updates for 1 year, but you can run the forum forever. The other option is to lease it which is cheaper, but then you can't run it anymore if you let the subscription expire.